


Orchard Park

by starboydjh



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Family Member Death, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Other, Songfic, go listen to it, idk what else to tag this as lol, sorry about this, this is based on an aaron west song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 05:24:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16988832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starboydjh/pseuds/starboydjh
Summary: "However badly you think it's going to hurt, it is going to be a million times worse."Dan, Phil, and Dan’s family try and work through the sudden death of Dan’s father.





	Orchard Park

The location, oddly enough, is Phil’s idea. 

“What about Orchard Park?” Phil piped up when Dan and his mum were discussing where to spread the ashes. Everyone who wanted some already had a small portion of the ashes; Adrian had touched up his tattoo by mixing some of them into the ink, Dan had a small urn of them on his desk back in London. His mum had been clear she didn’t want any. It’s bad luck having the dead in the house, she claimed. “I mean, you guys always talk about Orchard Park and how your dad would bring you there, it only seems fitting that it would be his final resting place.” 

The three of them are quiet for a moment and then Dan nods. “Perfect. We’ll leave at seven tomorrow morning. Just get it over with and be done.”

-

Adrian's holding the urn in his lap for a majority of the first hour, his head lolled against the window as he sleeps in the backseat. Dan’s in the driver’s seat with Phil beside him, the only one awake, focusing on almost nothing it seems as he navigates the highway ahead of him. Leaving so early is probably unnecessary, but Dan just wants to put all of this to bed as fast as he possibly can. His therapist will probably want to unpack that with him when he gets back home, but for now, he needs to get the three of them (well, four, if you count the ashes) to Orchard Park in one piece.

His brother stirs in the backseat, placing the urn in beside him and putting the seat belt over it to keep it safe. He smiles weakly at Dan who’s staring at him through the rearview mirror, then settles back into sleep quickly. Dan envies him for that, envies his brother and his partner for somehow being able to sleep at all these last two weeks. 

He hasn’t gotten a full night’s sleep since the police were pounding on his and Phil’s door late on a Wednesday night. His aunt had panicked because neither of them were picking up their phones, and someone had told her to call the London PD’s non-emergency line to check on them. Phil had been the one to open the door and after the officer at the door told him what happened, he woke Dan up immediately.

“Dan, come on, we have to go to your mum’s. It’s an emergency.” 

“What kind of emergency?” He asked with a horrified look on his face when he woke up.

Phil’s eyes had filled up with tears almost immediately and he shook his head slightly. “I’ll explain on the way, we just need to get to Reading now.” 

Dan didn’t cry. He was surprised that he didn’t. When his grandma had died, he cried for days, it seemed. But this time, he didn’t. This was sudden, it wasn’t something that any of them planned on happening, and trying to navigate the train station with the weird haze of emotions in his head had made him more frustrated than anything. The drama surrounding where his father would be laid to rest stressed him out, but he didn’t cry at the funeral either. He was silently angry for hours, slept for two straight days afterwards, and staunchly avoided talking about it after his sleeping bender. He acted like he was fine, as if this were just normal visit. Phil knew that Dan was just barely keeping it together. He wasn't sure if Dan was trying to convince everyone else he was fine, or trying to convince himself that he was fine, but all Phil could do was be there for him and make the little things easier. 

People were starting to wonder where they were online. It had been a week and a half since either of them had posted anything or interacted at all with anything online, and finally after that’s all Dan’s Twitter inbox was full of one day, he posted that they were ‘taking time away from the internet to handle some family issues.’

Phil groaning and stretching beside him pulls dan out of his thoughts. Despite himself, Dan smiles, his heart weakly skipping a beat over Phil just as it always does. “Morning sunshine,” Dan muses quietly. “If you feel car sick at all let me know, we can pull over for a second if you want.”

He nods and cracks his neck slightly. “I will, I know the drill. How are you?”

Phil can almost see Dan tense up slightly. “Fine. Just want to get today over with.” Dan’s heart ached for a moment, because this was weighing on Phil in a way he’d never seen before. Phil was usually the strong one of the two of them, but Dan didn’t miss the way that the bags under Phil’s eyes were much, much darker than they’ve ever been, and the way that he tossed and turned in his sleep at night. Phil was keeping himself and Dan above water right now, and, just like most things Phil had done for him over the last ten years, he was eternally grateful for all of it. 

The silence after a while becomes deafening, so in an attempt to at least fill it with something, Dan scans through the stations to find the news. The only discernible signal he ends up landing on is a sports talk radio station. It’s not exactly what he was looking for, but it gets the job done nonetheless. Everyone who calls in keeps talking about someone named Sam, how he’ll get into the premier league if he wants, how he’s the best prospect for any team to win the next World Cup. Dan doesn’t care, unlike most other Brits he knows who live and breathe football, but he still finds himself hoping that whoever Sam is makes it. No one complains about the radio station Dan picks; For most of the ride after everyone wakes up, no one talks at all. 

Part of him was glad that his mum hadn’t wanted to come. She was of no help at all the first week after it happened, leaving Dan, Phil, and Adrian to plan all of it. When she kicked up a fit about the final resting place, it took her sister pulling her into another room and laying into her to get her to stop. “I don’t care what you think of your ex, your boys lost their father and they need their mother to help them through this.”

“They’re twenty seven and twenty one year old men, they’re acting like little boys. They need to handle this like adults-“

“No, no, do not start with that. Daniel and Adrian _are_ two boys, two _children_ whose father died. They have a right to act like children, because that’s what they are. I don’t care how old they are, you still have to be a parent to your children. Their father is dead and they need their mother.” 

Once they get there, it's around nine in the morning, and the three of them are standing in front of the vast expanse of the park, waiting for someone else to make a move. Dan looks around to survey the space in front of them, his breath puffing out in small clouds around his nose. “What about back there in the river? Over the east wall?”

“Are you sure? That’s a bit of a hike from here.” Adrian said, and Dan shot him a look.

“Says the one who runs marathons on mountains for fun,” Dan joked which made his brother laugh, and which made Phil relax slightly. Seeing him joke with his brother showed Phil that his Dan was still somewhere in there. Things would be okay. Maybe not soon, but eventually.

“Point taken, let’s go.” It is a bit of a process to get everyone over the hill and make sure nothing spills, but when they get to their destination, the three stand silent for a long moment. 

After the moment passes, Phil breaks it. “Anyone want to say anything?” Dan and Adrian both shake their heads. 

“Might as well get on with it then, yeah?” Dan said, and there’s something surreal about actually watching it happen. He didn’t want to do it, he’d made that immensely clear, and he was glad that he wasn’t the one to do it. 

It doesn’t feel final to him. It looks just like the bucket of ashes his father would dump out in the woods behind their house after the winter season was over and they had to clean out the fireplace. He thinks to himself as they drive home that he should be feeling something, but he still doesn’t. He feels empty, like the urn in the backseat of his mum’s car. 

When they get home, the rest of his family greets the three of them, and there’s still an unspoken tight feeling in the air, as if they’re waiting for someone else to snap so they all can officially begin the grieving process. That’s something that had always baffled Phil about the Howells. His family felt their emotions, they talked everything out together as a family. Dan’s family bottled things up until they exploded and had to spend the next few months putting each other back together. 

The last time this happened, it took nearly an entire year to put Dan back together, the pieces left under the rubble of his grief sharp and terrible, a side of him Phil had never seen before. It seemed like picking the pieces up injured Phil in the process as well, and they still fell apart at some points. He wasn’t sure if he was fully prepared to spend another year in hell again, but for Dan, Phil would weather the storm and pick up the pieces a million times over. 

Dan’s mum is making dinner for everyone when Phil walks in to fill his glass of water again, and she glances at him. “How is he?” She asks.

“Honestly? Awful.” Phil makes a brief moment of eye contact with her before turning back to what he was doing. “It’s been nearly a week and he hasn’t cried once.” 

His mum nods. “Typical Daniel. Give him some space for tonight still, let him stew for a little longer, and then I’ll try and talk to him tomorrow. After everyone else is gone.” 

The next night, Dan’s humming as he’s doing the dishes. Him, Adrian and Phil are the only family members left in his mum’s house now, as everyone had left throughout the day to get back to wherever they needed to be. His mum’s dishwasher had been broken for about a month now and she just hadn’t bothered to get it fixed, so when she asked him to do the dishes he wasn’t expecting to have to hand wash all the dishes left over from ten people being in her house for a weekend. 

The atmosphere feels oddly normal again, as if it’s just a regular visit. As he hums along to some random tune in his head he swears he can hear his dad humming along with him, a common occurrence after Dan saved up his own money to pay for his piano lessons and the shitty keyboard he bought for himself. He’d hear his dad singing the classical tunes he’d plunk out note by note that everyone seemed to know by heart, and Dan would wonder if he was bothered by the tinny-sounding fake piano or if he liked it. 

He’d never gotten that answer and now he never would. The thought sat heavily in his chest as he continued to scrub the pan in his hands that was caked in cheese, when his mum came up beside him.

“You sound a lot like your dad when you sing,” she said quietly. Dan just glanced at her as he handed her something to dry off. “He could’ve been a singer if he wanted to. I always assumed he was where you got your musical talent from.” 

The air is quiet for a moment. “That’s the nicest thing I’ve heard you say about him in years.” 

His mum sighed slightly. “I know, I just- the divorce and all-”

“Yeah, we know. But you know what else? He didn’t say one bad word about you over the last four years. Not one.” Dan could feel angry tears pooling in his eyes, but he blinked them back and didn’t look his mother in the eyes. “He didn’t talk about you the way you talk about him. Even after everything was final, even after he stopped talking to you, even after everything that’s happened.” Dan coughed to clear his throat, the first true crack in the strong exterior he’d been holding up all week. 

“Have you cried yet?” his mum asked after another moment of silence. 

He nodded. “Yeah. When Phil told me on Wednesday.” He was trying to save face, and he knew he was always a terrible liar, but he didn’t want his mother to worry about him.

“Dan, I’m your mum. I can tell when you’re lying.” She wrapped an arm around his shoulder and pulled him close. The small gesture made Dan finally break, crying into his mum’s shoulder as she held him properly. She whispered in his ear, ran a hand comfortingly up and down his back, comforted him in any way she could think. Once he was all cried out, the dishes long forgotten, she held him at an arm’s length, one hand on his shoulder and the other holding his cheek. “I know that you love to be strong, and be a man just like we told you to, but you’re allowed to feel. You’re allowed to break. You’ve done so well. Your father was so proud of you. Of both of you. The two of you are incredible, and I credit that to your father.” Dan nodded and wiped his nose on his shirt sleeve. “For every bad thing I’ve said about your father over the years, I can say ten incredible things about him. And I regret not saying more of those things while he was around. He’s the father of my sons, who helped raise them to be strong, adventurous, intelligent, kind, caring young men.” 

Dan felt like he didn’t have a lot left to lose anymore. Most of his life was on display for everyone else to analyze, to theorize about, to discuss with their friends over the internet. The few things he felt like he had left to lose were under this roof: his brother, his mum, the love of his life. His family. He kept his family close to his chest, like cards at a blackjack table, sheltered them from the very public life he’d chosen for himself. Moments like this reminded him why he kept his family’s life so close: because he didn't want to lose them again like he had so many years ago. He would lose them all someday, just like he learned in CCD; ash to ash and dust to dust we shall return. Just like his father had. For now though, while everyone else was still above the ground, he’d protect them with his life.

**Author's Note:**

> drop me a line starboydjh.tumblr.com


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